


Scarlet & A Scar

by tehtarik



Series: SpiritAssassin Week 2017 [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: A Series of AUs, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Multi, Reincarnation, SpiritAssassin Week, SpiritAssassin Week 2017, because, spiritassassin, this is pretty much half OF, why not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 21:57:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10773270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehtarik/pseuds/tehtarik
Summary: Chirrut and Baze die on Scarif but their bonded souls are reborn into different (and often idiotic) lifetimes, always together, in some form or another.





	Scarlet & A Scar

**Author's Note:**

> Combined the prompts of bodyswap and soul-bonded for this one.
> 
> See if you can spot who is who.
> 
> This one is a weird one, but in the end, after 4 hours of sleep, I'm actually pretty pleased with it. My brain goes to weird places.
> 
> **For SpiritAssassin Week 2017  
>  Prompts: _bodyswap_ and _soul-bonded_**

After reuniting Baze Malbus and Chirrut Imwe for the briefest of moments, the Force shreds them both, pulverises them down to the subatomic level.

Before that, though, Chirrut reaches a hand upward to touch Baze’s face, to brush his fingers along that scar beneath his left eye.

For Baze, before the grenade detonates, he looks toward Chirrut for the last time, seeing Chirrut’s splayed form and outstretched hands, emptied eyes. The shards of uneti staff beside him. He sees the scarlet burn of colour from the inner layer of Chirrut’s robes.

And then the world casts them out in a moment of complete erasure.

And then the Force sutures them back together.

 

***

 

 

**I.**

Kecik and Zizi are so-so friends. They met two weeks ago when Zizi came down from the big city, dropped off in front of Zizi’s grandparents’ house, in a sleek Mercedes with tinted windows. Cars like that were hardly ever seen along the unsealed potholed roads of Kecik’s kampung.

Kecik thinks she’s going to have fun with this rich city girl, who stares each time the rooster pokes its head out from the undergrowth and crows at her, or shouts every time a monitor lizard ambles across the road.

She tells Zizi to go through a lalang hedge and down a slope and delights when Zizi gets to the bottom and sinks waist-deep into the thick briny mud of a nipah swamp.

“You’re lucky. Other swamps got leeches, but this one don’t have,” Kecik tells Zizi. She thinks Zizi is not very clever.

Kecik sees a dead branch on the ground and tells Zizi to jump on it because it will make such a nice crisp sound. And so Zizi does and gets bitten by a million kerengga hidden in the hollow.

Nothing more satisfying than seeing a city girl get kerengga in her pants.

Zizi always forgives her, though.

One day Kecik spies something up in the branches of a nangka tree. It looks like a fat shapeless turd strung up in the leaves. There is a low machine-like hum coming from it.

“You see that,” she tells Zizi. She puts a large rock in Zizi’s hands. “You throw the stone and hit that thing right there.”

“Isn’t that a hornet nest?” says Zizi.

“Stupid! That one there is a fruit – the best fruit of all the trees in the kampung. It looks yucky but inside the flesh is the best. Very juicy. You knock it down then you can bring it back for your atuk, make him happy.”

Zizi looks doubtful, but she takes the rock, aims and throws. The nest smashes and the hornets come screaming.

“Run!” shouts Kecik and they both scram, Kecik thinking it’s a big joke, and Zizi crying. Zizi falls down and cuts her face, below her left eye. Kecik pulls her up and the two of them continue running.

In the end, they make it safely to Kecik’s house, though Zizi gets stung and her arm balloons. She gets taken to the local clinic and Kecik feels real bad. She waits outside the clinic but Zizi doesn’t come out.

The next day, Zizi’s mother takes Zizi home, back to the big city and Kecik never ever sees Zizi again.

 

 

**III.**

For countless years, the Nile crocodile and the Egyptian plover bird have evolved a symbiotic relationship with each other.

The crocodile will not eat the plover bird. The plover will brave the crocodile’s halitosis and pick parasites and rotting scraps of meat clear of its curved yellow teeth. In return, the plover gets its meal.

There is one old crocodile on the riverbank, a battle-scarred creature who has fought many territorial battles. There is one particular plover bird that always goes to it. It has the usual grey plumage of plovers, but its underbelly, instead of the typical orange, is a sharp hard scarlet.

One day the crocodile opens its mouth for the plover as usual. The plover dives in but and eats its fill, but it is in a playful mood. It pokes and pecks at the crocodile’s tongue, and the crocodile twitches its mouth in warning. The bird ignores the warning and hops further in, close to the crocodile’s throat, and pecks at it.

The crocodile snaps its jaws shut.

Crocodiles are not supposed to eat plover birds.

 

 

**II.**

“Not like that,” says Single-lotus to Leaping-fish, signing as he speaks. His long fingers a smooth language of motion. “You’ve written the wrong sigil on the eyelid. You do that and the head won’t be able to open its eyes. Have you ever heard of blind ghost-eaters?”

Leaping-fish shrugs and passes the needle to Single-lotus. _You do it,_ he doesn’t bother signing back.

Single-lotus stitches the sigil onto the lion head’s huge fur-trimmed eyelid, the curves of the character-sigil glowing gold beneath the point of his needle.

Single-lotus, whose full name is Single-lotus-in-the-light-of-the-harvest-moon-unfurling-new-grace, according to the tiresome tradition that dictates every name must be a haiku, is the head of the lion.

His skin partner, Leaping-fish, whose complete name is Leaping-fish-bright-scales-darting-up-the-waterfalls-into-heron’s-beak, is the body of the lion.

Together, they are the key members of their travelling exorcism troupe, getting rid of evil spirits plaguing towns across the land. Last week it was jiangshi in a village by the paddy fields. Tonight, a town afflicted by bagui, drought-ghosts, where rain hasn’t fallen all year round and hot winds singe the crops.

The townsfolk come out to greet the troupe. The troupe leader sets up their instruments.

“Ready?” Single-lotus enunciates clearly, knowing Leaping-fish likes to read his lips, see him talk words that his ears will never hear.

Leaping-fish nods. _Don’t do anything stupid tonight_ , he signs.

“Trust me a little, won’t you?” Single-lotus smiles. He clasps Leaping-fish’s hands in his own.

They utter the prayers with their hands, sign them. The newly-stitched sigils on the lion skin glow; the fur ripples. The horn grows sharp and the mirror on the lion’s forehead gleams crystal-bright. They put the skin on. Then the lion goes racing through the town, powered by the heartbeat of drum and gong, hunting the drought-ghosts.

The bagui howl hot scorching breath at them, but the lion opens its bow-shaped mouth, bares its gold teeth and tongue and swallows them. Single-lotus feels the pulses of energy from the ghosts’ dissipating essence shiver through him. He feels Leaping-fish’s grip around his waist as they chase the bagui across the rooftops.

The last ghost flees beyond the town’s boundaries and without thinking, Single-lotus directs the lion after it. He ignores Leaping-fish’s tugging at him desperately. Trying to pull him back.

“Just one more!” he shouts, even though Leaping-fish can’t hear. The lion skin with the two of them glide out into the hills, far beyond the anchor of its heartbeat. Away from the drums.

Too late then, Single-lotus realises his mistake. The skin quivers around them, grows warm, as warm as the two of them. They fuse into the skin and the skin becomes them.

The lion blinks its eyes on its own, listens to its double heartbeat.

No ghosts ever come back to the town. Neither do Leaping-fish or Single-lotus.

But there are plenty of stories of a lion prowling in the surrounding hills.

 

 

**IV.**

Bao does not respect his elders. Especially not Charsiew, his grandmother.

Charsiew and Bao are not their real names, because real names are a tricky thing for them both to have.

Charsiew tells Bao, “I am the heart of all our heists. The flavourful meat and the substance. Without me, you wouldn’t succeed. And you are the white outside. Stale when cold, grubby in people’s hands. Your skin gets peeled off before being eaten.”

“Bah!” shouts Bao. “You’re all bone and gristle. You’re old and you’re going to die soon!”

“Then I will come back as a ghost to haunt you, stale-bread,” says Charsiew.

They night is moonless by the plains, thick with the threat of a thunderstorm. Charsiew and Bao skirt the perimeter of a large corral full of camels.

“Quietly now,” Bao hisses at his grandmother, “or we’ll be caught up in another stampede.”

“One would think that _you’re_ the grandmother,” Charsiew snaps. “And I’ve done this longer than you.”

“Why are you wearing red?” says Bao. “Red makes the camels go crazy.”

“Red is good luck.”

“You superstitious old lady,” Bao mutters. He works at the latch of the gate. The camels stamp and snort inside. To Charsiew, he says, “I’m letting three of them out. You direct them to the truck.”

He opens the gate and at that moment, a fork of lightning strikes the ground, not far from the corral. The roll of thunder is deafening, and it’s enough to startle the camels. They nudge the gate aside and the whole herd of them come barrelling out of the corral. Another flash of lightning in the sky, and the camels must have seen Charsiew’s bright red pants and shirt, because they go even crazier.

The storm causes much damage to the farm. The next morning, the farmer finds his paddock empty of camels, a waiting truck by the roadside, and two broken, trampled bodies out on the plains.

 

***

 

The Force is not a singular entity or a traceable pattern. The Force has no language, and it is not a language.

But if the Force has any vestige of sentience at all, if the Force knows anything from its dealings with the souls that pass along its myriad pathways, specifically the two particular souls that sometimes go by the name of Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus, and other times by other names, then perhaps the Force may have learnt something of a language. Something that can be translated into the scrap of a language.

The Force might know of a word: the shared, bonded essence of those two souls, encapsulated within a single word.

_Idiots_ , the Force might say, if it could.

 

 

**V.**

Two people meet by the sea. One of them is wearing red. From a distance, that’s the only thing that can be seen about them. A scarlet burn of colour against the grey waves. The other person has a scar, tracking its way across their left cheek.

This is the first time they’ve met. Or is it? They seem to know each other. But they don’t remember, not really.

Never mind. They can always start again, can’t they?

“Hello,” says the one in scarlet. They smile.

“Hello,” says the one with the scar.

 .

**Author's Note:**

> mini glossary
> 
> kampung - village  
> monitor - big ass lizard  
> nipah - coastal palm  
> lalang - sharp grass. very good for making lalang arrows.  
> kerengga - ants that will eat you alive (not really but feels like it)  
> jiangshi - zombie ghost  
> bagui - drought ghost  
> char siu bao - bbq pork bun
> 
>  
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
